I’m not thrilled about “staffed/unstaffed” because that implies that there should be more than one person sitting there and all of them were out. Staff represents a group of people.

I’d see staff being used in the case where somebody walked in to an office with several desks, and there was nobody around. Then saying the place was unstaffed would work.

Perhaps not politically correct, but I do not feel diminished in any way by the words manned or unmanned. It’s one of those words that, to me, does not specifically imply that the person was male, like the word mailman does.

Well, I kind of understand the reasoning - this is where you come down to the crux of the matter. I mean, I personally don't think too much of gender neutral language if it ends up as clunky 'he/she' formations and no matter what people say about the plural pronouns being fine it does *not sound better than just using the singular male to me. At least in this case too, there doesn't seem to be an obvious way around the problem. In other cases, I've heard of mixing pronouns, but it isn't very popular; certainly not in technical texts! I also read a book which used male phrasing throughout but commented in the introduction that this was in no way meant to discriminate against the other sex, but rather was chosen simply becuase it was simple. That approach worked in that case, I think. Be that as it may, anyone involved in writing publicised English texts has to grapple with genders whether they like it or not. I do wonder how things are managed in other languages. English certainly seems to be an exception in its thoroughness as far as I can tell, and a little hyper-PC compared to other languages, is it not?

But many readers do. If the object is to communicate, it is wise not to alienate them. This is not to endorse an over-indulgence in pcese, but considerations of gender do not obscure and, in fact, have merit.

a lot of mainline Protestant churches re-wrote their hymnals and other service books in the last couple of decades to eliminate gender-specific language. I'm all for it. we do it for future generations.

The monologue perhaps, but I was typing about the use of the word unmanned. (The Latin virgo 'maiden, virgin' is related to vir 'man' and English were as in werewolf or weregeld.) Unmanned for deflowered is kind of a stretch, though.

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